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How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
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Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
PolitiFact Georgia last week kicked off the first in a planned series of fact-checks on state spending for K-12 education, something Gov. Nathan Deal says is due for an overhaul.
We began by checking a claim that the state contributed a smaller percentage of the total costs of education in Fiscal Year 2013 than it did in 2002, leaving a larger percentage of the costs to the federal and local governments to pick up.
Deal has set a goal of overhauling the state’s education funding formula, known as QBE, before the 2016-2017 school year, and late last week named members of his Education Reform Commission to look at this and other education topics.
PolitiFact scribes looked at second education claim last week: that the planned merger of Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College will create one of the largest universities in the country.
We also fact-checked claims about this year’s religious liberty bill. And we checked a statement by Sen. Marco Rubio in his new book: Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone,” in which he claimed the number of administrative employees at colleges and universities has more than doubled over the past 25 years.
Abbreviated versions of this week’s fact checks are below. Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Jeff Graham on Wednesday, January 7th, 2015 in an interview with WABE radio:
The religious liberty bill proposed in the Georgia House of Representatives does not specifically exclude corporations, which means they can legally claim a religious exemption.
Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, recently said a retooled version of last year’s proposed religious liberty bill still allow private businesses to discriminate against customers by citing religious beliefs.
“It is my certainly my understanding that if corporations are not specifically excluded under state law, then corporations could still claim a religious exemption,” Graham said in an interview with WABE radio.
The new bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Sam Teasley, R-Marietta, agrees with Graham and will make what Mark Goldfeder, a law professor at Emory University who also is the senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, says is an easy fix.
The bill will be amended to define a person as only a “natural person or religious organization,” meaning only specific organizations, churches, temples and the like, Teasley told PolitiFact Georgia.
He said this achieve his original objective: Stop government overreach on an individual’s right to religious conscience. He said he plans that change in the next week.
The claim was whether the bill, as drafted, would allow businesses to claim religious exemptions.
We rate Graham’s statement True.
Claire Suggs on Friday, January 9th, 2015 at a Media Symposium:
The state covered a smaller percentage of the cost of K-12 education in 2013 than it did in 2002.
As the state prepares to revamp its education funding formula, one topic that’s expected to come up: how much of the cost of K-12 education should the state be paying?
Claire Suggs, an education policy analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, told education writers on Jan. 9.that the state has been covering a smaller percentage of those costs.
The state was picking up 56 percent of those costs in Fiscal Year 2002, the year before education austerity cuts began, and only 51 percent in Fiscal 2013, Suggs said during a presentation at the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education’s Media Symposium.
Records from the state Department of Education shows that K-12 education costs totalling about $10.4 billion in Fiscal 2002 were split three ways: with 56 percent covered by the state, 38 percent by locals and 6 percent by the federal government.
Fast forward to the Fiscal 2013, the costs for K-12 education were $14.2 billion, and the split was 51 percent state funds, 41 percent local and 8 percent federal.
But the statement needs context about the economic times, the federal stimulus dollars that were available in this period.
We rated Suggs’ statement as Mostly True.
GSU Alumni Association said in a January 13th, 2015 mass email to former students:
The merger of Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College will make GSU one of the largest universities in the nation, with more than 54,000 students.
Since 2011, the University System of Georgia has been consolidating some of its 35 colleges and universities.
The biggest of these mergers — combining four-year Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta and largely two-year Georgia Perimeter College anchored in the suburbs — is slated to be final in 2016.
A consolidated school would have 53,927 students, if the 21,371 students who attended Georgia Perimeter last fall were put on GSU’s rolls.
That would put GSU’s enrollment well above UGA’s and No. 1 in the state by more than 20,000, based on current data. Enrollment is forecast to go above 54,000 by 2016, based on normal growth.
The merger of Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College will also make the combined university one of the largest in the nation for colleges with traditional brick-and-mortar campuses.
We rate the alumni association’s statement True.
Sen. Marco Rubio in his new book: “Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone”:
The number of administrative employees at colleges and universities has more than doubled over the past 25 years.
In one passage from his new book, “American Dreams: Restoring
Economic Opportunity for Everyone, ” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., takes aim at the growth in college bureaucracies, which he suggests has gotten in the way of teaching and has led to steep increases in tuition. Rubio says universities should stop hiring bureaucrats.
“One study, ” Rubio writes, “found the number of administrative employees at
colleges and universities (think deputy assistant to the associate vice provost
and gender equity administrators) has more than doubled over the last 25 years,
outpacing the growth of students by more than two to one.”
We looked into it, and it turns out Rubio is largely right. The study Rubio footnoted in his book found that from 1987 to 2012, the number of administrators and professional staff did, indeed, double and grew at twice the rate of the student population.
Another researcher found similar results: From 1990 to 2012, the number of professional staff at four-year and two-year institutions rose by 91 percent at a time when enrollment rose by 43 percent.
But the positions Rubio singles out — provosts and high level administrators — are growing at a far slower pace. Most of the growth has come in positions that benefit students, such as career advisers, to take those roles away from professors so they can teach.
We rated the claim by Rubio Mostly True.
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